Take a look at this nice video on RA’s Real Scene section about Detroit, MI.

Detroit nowadays has a lot of unemployment problems and looks like an abandoned city: economy collapsed and buildings are falling apart, in 2013 Detroit filed the largest municipal bankruptcy case in U.S. history.

There was a time when Detroit was a florid huge automobile production centre (GM, Chrysler, and Ford) and lots of people migrated to the city and the suburbs to work, black people especially. But what I want to talk about Detroit is something more important: it’s called TECHNO.

Detroit is the city where techno was born from the mind and the fingers of some eclectic youngsters and their enthusiastic friends, it was the place where in the early 80s the Electrifying Mojo would use the airwaves to spread the new language, it was a place where you could go and dance your ass off in abandoned buildings or improvised clubs with a new dark and synthethic sound. This was not Chicago with its House funky beats, not even New York and its Disco shit. Detroit was cold, decaying, racially instable, poor, post industrial and dark.

The conjunction for the birth of techno may relies here: a strong northern soul/funk legacy fused with popular Chicago House mixed up with sci-fi and Futuristic imaginery, Acid House and post industrial rage.

This is what I think made Detroit techno producers so unique: the ability to groove and to catch your soul.

there is a splendid documentary called High-Tech Soul to watch if you want to learn about the details of how everything came up togheter from the famous Belleville three (Juan Atkins, Derrick May, and Kevin Saunderson) and how they needed to move to Europe (England) to legitimete themselves.

Few months ago I met Simone, a local dj known as Cutter, a nice and distinguished guy with a cutting sense of humour I talked to many times at the glorious Glucose techno night in Rome.
We decided to get togheter producing some tracks and we quickly discovered we were a perfect match, we could produce music easily and we were really excited about what we produced.Further Pushers were born!
We compiled a demo and contacted three labels we thought could be interested in. We got no reply and we decided to print the vinyls ourselves. FUCK YEAH!

We first mixed the three tracks we choose to release at Subsound Studio in Rome with the help of Luciano Lamanna a really talented and enthusiastic guy who was really impressed by our work. We mastered the tracks at Andrea Merlini’s studio (one of the best mastering technician in Rome and also part of the famous Minimal Rome crew) cause we decided to keep it local.
Everything went so fast and we were ready to send the files to the printing factory. We decided to print only 150 copies cause we didn’t know how actually the game worked so we kept it kinda low profile.
Then Luciano Lamanna got us into his label/collective called Love Blast and we were happy to be part of a local community with friends and skilled producers.

Now the vinyl is out and we are so fracking excited.
(the digital will be also released on the 14th on every major digital music stores)

Some technical info about the records.
We recorded the tracks jamming on our cheap synths and drum machines: we used a MC303 , a MC505, a MFB522, a Yamaha TG33, an drrum machine called Eko Ritmo20 and some pedals fx like the Ibanez Tube Screamer and the Memory Boy. Plus we used some field recordings.

His love for analogue instruments is enormous and in his bunker in Bad Driburg – it’s the real name, I myself thought it was Michael saying his town was “bad” but… it’s the city’s real name – close to Kassel in Germany, there Michael collects and plays many juicy analog machines.

Complementary to his analogue artillery Michael often uses his own field recordings of natural sound processed to get unique hats and snares – this tecnique is nowadys used by many producers as TommyFourSeven, Plastikman and myself (eheheh).

Actually he’s looking for a serious label to release his deep tracks and he’s also working on some new ambient music projects.

I really love Michael’s webcam video in which he plays live his own tracks in the studio, YouTube is full of such videos, be sure to check them out so to get a taste of his incredibly elegant sound and analogue warmth.

Here’s a couple of links:

so far he released for Rumpfunk Records two deep and experimental lps full of techno, electronica and ambient: Waldgedicht EP (October 2008) and In Weiter Ferne which registers the label’s downloads record: 60.000!!! being Rumpfunk a netlabel you can freely download both of them 🙂

Last cool things about Michael, he’s an hardcore gamer, those fps games in which you roam around with a big gun in your hands trying to shoot enemies, actually his web clan is Homefront’s number one in the world . wow! – this is why you can see homefront’s big poster stuck on Michael studio wall.